You've Got the Sort of Laugh That Waters Me
by sunsetdreamer
Summary: She's comfortable with science and equations and statistics, and when she thinks of the parts of her and Booth that shine on their best days, she can believe that they'll be okay.


This is just a short little piece that was originally posted on Live Journal as my August Love Month submission. I think everyone's read it already, but I figured I should post it so that anyone who hasn't gets proof I really have been writing stuff and not just consciously slacking when it comes to my chaptered fic of never ending brick walls :P . For the record, I AM working on that. I just have a little ditty planned for October 1st that I sort of need to finish first. Slow and (kind of) steady, baby.

* * *

><p><strong>You've Got the Sort of Laugh that Waters Me<strong>

_Life is not a looking glass  
>don't get tangled in your past<br>like I am learning not to_

_**Pride and Joy**__, Brandi Carlile_

The practice of napping is in no way foreign to Brennan. She works long hours and she sleeps when she can no longer function, and quite often this means a half an hour on a couch or in a chair or any other available surface. Just until she can get her second wind. On this Saturday, she wakes up and everything is different – which is fitting when one considers the differences between the life she _has_ and the life she _had_ six months ago. In the past, she has left the blinds open intentionally because the sun keeps her from sleeping too long and she prefers to return to her work in a timely fashion. But in the now, Brennan wakes up in her bed and the first thing she registers is that the shades have been drawn while she has been sleeping. It's the mark of another presence in her home, and she finds this comforting.

Second, she notices the music.

It's an average Saturday afternoon and Booth is in one of his moods. His boyish, ridiculous moods that compel him to try and do things like build snowmen or push her around in a shopping cart. And Brennan is feeling indulgent. She wants to chalk it up to being pregnant but the truth is that his smile often makes her smile, and this has little to do with any change brought on by her pregnancy and _everything _to do with who she and Booth have been to one another long before there was a fetus. She allows life to move through her – allows _him _to move through her – and he does the same, and though the intensity of them unsettles her occasionally, she has no desire to go back.

She cries more. But she laughs more, too. She laughs loudly and without reservation, and the sensation is pleasant.

So, she's feeling indulgent and when she is (somewhat rudely) awakened from her nap by music, she's confused more than annoyed and she blinks rapidly as she shuffles toward the door.

It's a song she knows... a _band _she knows, and she feels a little thrill. Music is one thing she almost always gets. Good music, anyway. She hears things on the radios in stores sometimes that she doesn't recognise, but the sounds are very rarely interesting and she chooses not to dwell on them.

When she steps into the living room Booth is sitting on the couch, and he looks appropriately sheepish when he notices her standing just inside the threshold.

"Did I wake you up?" His voice is apologetic but there is mischief in his smile and something in his tone sounds pleased.

"I was sleeping, Booth. And the music is very loud. This outcome can hardly be unexpected."

The mischief becomes a little more apparent, but he still does his best to hide his triumph. "I had no idea it was so loud."

She tilts her head. "What are you doing?"

"You've been asleep for two and a half hours," he stands up from the couch and meets her, "I got bored, Bones."

"What?" Her head turns to the clock mounted on the wall. "Damn it," she mutters.

She's highly adaptable, but she's often resistant to change nonetheless. So while she's adjusting to the physical and mental changes of the last few months, things like unwittingly falling asleep for two and a half hours just piss her off. But she can't stay mad. The music is inviting and he's in a mood and she is so much more susceptible to these things than she would have ever thought she could be.

The not-so-soft volume of the popular ballad fills the space between them, and as John Lennon declares that he's in love for the first time and _don't you know it's gonna last?_, Booth holds out his hand and gives her the smile that melts her metaphoric heart every time.

"Wanna dance?"

"Not particularly, no," Brennan answers honestly.

He takes her hand; he has learned to combat her negativity by simply ignoring it. And she wants to roll her eyes and turn down the volume before the elderly woman who just moved in next door gets it in her head to come over and complain (again), but she doesn't. Because he is in one of his ridiculous moods and she is feeling indulgent and he looks so inexplicably happy to be in her company, the choice is almost entirely out of her hands.

She loves him. And so she dances.

* * *

><p>The problem with the shuffle feature is that one never quite knows what guilty, dark recesses of musical pleasure the iPod is going to bring to the public eye. (Booth often tells her that there is no such problem with record players. But they're in her apartment and her iPod reigns) So the romance and intimacy of their slow twirls within a world comprised solely of them are shattered when the song ends and an ostentatious bass begins.<p>

The aggressive rap that she occasionally loves so much makes an angry debut and Brennan begins to laugh before he can change it. "I find that particular expression of yours quite funny."

"How can you stand this?" He steps toward the stereo but he's stopped by her laughter once more. "What?"

"Nothing," she says, even as she laughs again.

"Come on, Bones. Tell me."

"It's something that Angela said."

Booth's eyes narrow suspiciously and he's suddenly fairly certain he isn't going to like where this ends, but he can't just let her keep it to herself. Not now.

"What?" he prods.

She finds herself caught up in the moment and she revels in the silliness of it all for a time. Angela would describe it as adorable, but these are not the kind of things Brennan shares with Angela. She speaks of them to no one, and it's not just because _what goes on between us is ours_, but because there's this irrational part of her that thinks all _this _may just up and disappear if she dares attempt to put it into words.

"She said," Brennan pauses to laugh again, "she said that sometimes she can't figure out if you're more like an eight year old boy, or an eighty year old man."

Booth looks predictably affronted and she begins to giggle.

"Do you get it? Because you are a fascinating combination of-

"Yeah, I get it, Bones. It's not that funny."

"I disagree. I think it's very funny."

The god-awful music continues to play but now she's looking at him with a mischievous smile of her own, and he can't do anything but stare back somewhat suspiciously as he waits to see what she's plotting. He's known her for years and she's done everything from repeating old movie monologues verbatim to dancing on stage while pretending she can play guitar. When she finds her appropriate atmosphere of frivolity, she is carefree and fun and full of surprises. But he's not really thinking about all these things he already knows about her. So when she tilts her head and waits out the instrumental interlude before jumping in and enthusiastically rapping along with the artist, it could not be more unexpected.

And Booth finds something entirely new to love about Brennan.

She knows every word. She continues for fifteen second without taking a breath. Maybe she could have gone longer, but his shock wears off and he begins to laugh so hard his eyes tear up, and she can't see him laugh like this without laughing herself.

He's in one of his moods and she is feeling indulgent, and they are both very glad he interrupted her nap. For a time.

* * *

><p>It starts with a knock, as a shared dream did some years ago. But they aren't thinking about this because the truth is, their reality surpasses everything they had thought they wanted in that universe. They hear a knock and Booth groans because it's not the first knock they've heard in the last few weeks.<p>

"You should answer it."

Brennan pretends to be shocked. "It could be anyone, Booth. I was under the impression you believe answering the door to be exceptionally dangerous, given the way you carry on when I-

"I don't carry on, Bones. I just think you should maybe at least check the peephole before you go letting in any old crazy from off the street..."

"Your desire to protect me should be heightened now that I'm carrying your child."

He glares. "Answer it."

"I don't think I want to."

"Bones, she _hates _me."

"She isn't particularly fond of me either, Booth."

"Look, you're pregnant, alright? Babies make people all soft and mushy. You should go."

It's her turn to look affronted. "You can barely tell!"

Booth's eyes automatically fall to the slight swell of her belly and then travel up to the far more noticeable swell of her breasts. And then he gets distracted.

"Booth!" she snaps, "You're doing it again!"

"I'm sorry!"

The knocking on the door resumes and Booth dials down the volume, even though at this point it is rather like locking the barn door after the horse has escaped. No amount of smiling and engaging conversation could win over this neighbour; he's tried. Although he likes to think that it has less to do with him losing his touch and more to do with Bones vehemently correcting the woman's initial marriage assumption. Oh, and then her immediate – rather defensive – lecture on the natural shift away from the traditional nuclear family in a modern society.

He pushes Brennan toward the door and she glares over her shoulder, but she resignedly continues onward and turns the bolts. And then she begins muttering about the nosiness of others and her rights and the fact that _she owns this apartment_, and Booth decides that maybe sending her to the door hadn't been the best overall choice after all. He hurries over and she resists his assistance and they fumble over the doorknob together, and they're still kind of struggling for control as it turns and swings open.

It's not the neighbour. Cam stands in the hall with her hand poised to knock again, and she's wearing a determined expression that causes Booth to believe the next series of knocks may have caused serious damage to their door.

"Hey Cam."

"Don't 'hey' me, Seeley. Do you people not believe in answering your phones anymore?"

Brennan looks vaguely puzzled and Booth reflexively glances back into the apartment in the general direction of the living room (where his phone sits on the bookshelf), and the bedroom (where he last saw hers resting on the dresser). However, he doesn't have time to form a response to the rhetorical question before Cam focuses on Brennan.

"I've been trying to get a hold of you for the better part of an hour and a half. Call me crazy, but when you don't answer your phone I start to get anxious. That usually means someone's been kidnapped."

"What's wrong?" Brennan asks, slightly bewildered.

Cam's eyebrows rise in a genuine surprise that shocks some of the irritation out of her face. "You forgot."

Brennan bristles and the denial is immediate. "Whatever it is you believe I've forgotten, I'm sure you're mistaken."

"The interview regarding the changes to the Civil War exhibit."

"What about it?"

A second or two passes, during which, Cam can't do anything but stare. "It was today. Two hours ago."

"No," Brennan responds definitively. "That's next weekend."

"No," Cam counters slowly. "It was today."

For a moment Brennan looks furious, and Booth takes an unconscious step back because he knows better than to get in between them when they reach this point. Then her face goes stony calm and she turns on her heel and disappears into the apartment without another word. Cam looks questioningly at Booth, but he merely shrugs because he's determined not to get into it with either one of them today. Today, Seeley Booth is Switzerland.

Brennan returns armed with her cell phone and her day planner, and Booth makes himself scarce under the guise of putting on a pot of coffee. Cam sends him a glare that screams _coward_, but Brennan takes no notice. She's far too busy tenaciously flipping through the calendar pages on her phone.

"You told me next weekend, Cam. I remember it very clearly. And I keyed the date and time into my phone the moment you left my office. As I always do."

She stills as she reads the screen and then her jaw clenches. The phone is promptly stuffed into her pocket and Brennan walks purposefully to the couch, leaving Cam to take a deep breath before following her. She flips rapidly through the pages of her agenda and when she lays the large planner on the coffee table, Cam sees the moment the scientist has no choice but to accept that in this case, she is wrong. The evidence glares at her from both the phone and the written planner and short of accusing Cam of tampering with them, she doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Brennan is quite obviously dumbfounded and Cam feels a little guilty. The interview hadn't been overly difficult to reschedule but she really had worried when Brennan hadn't been punctual as usual. And that worry had turned to annoyance when she had arrived at the apartment just in time to hear the music and laughter of friends who seemed to be just fine.

"It isn't a big deal," she relents. "The reporter's going to come back Tuesday."

"I apologise," Brennan says. She sounds lost and distracted and since Cam knows exactly how far Brennan would usually go to avoid a direct apology, she feels considerably worse. "In the future I will be more thorough when I review my daily schedule."

Booth comes out of the kitchen and stops in his tracks; Cam looks guilty and Brennan looks like she's trying exceptionally hard to mask how much she wants to hit something, and he communicates an unmistakeable _what the hell did you do to her? _to his friend over his partner's head. Cam shrugs helplessly and things slow to an awkward crawl.

The visit shifts _everything_. Brennan no longer feels indulgent or patient or affectionate or anything outside of annoyance, really, and Booth's good mood dies with hers. She's mad at herself – at these changes in her life and her apparent inability to adapt without falling short where it has always mattered most to her – and Booth is mad because she's disappeared inside herself to that place where he can never quite reach her.

"It's not a big deal, Bones. Cam said so herself," Booth tries. He knows he'll probably regret it, knows she's feeling defensive and a conversation between them now will likely end badly, but that compulsive need to fix everything – the one that comes from a good place but doesn't always work out for the best – is strong and he can't quite help it.

"It is a big deal," she bites without looking at him. "I don't forget things, Booth. Not important things. Not _work _things."

"You've got a lot on your plate right now. No one's holding it against you."

"_I _am holding it against me," she exclaims loudly. "This isn't who I am. I don't like feeling so, so..."

"Out of control."

"Yes." She releases a relieved breath because for a moment she thinks he gets it. But he's quiet now, almost angry, and she knows that somewhere between her brain and his mouth, something important has been lost.

"What are you saying?"

His voice is guarded and a little cold, like he's suddenly expecting her to break his heart again, and she hates that he still feels this way. That he can't quite be secure in how she feels about him. And it upsets her a little because yes, she's made mistakes, but her body is changing and her emotions are everywhere and she should be allowed to get a little bothered by it all every once in a while without him assuming that she's going to make a run for the door.

"Nothing," she sighs. "Nothing. I'm just tired."

Booth blinks and rational thought reasserts dominance over the insecurities that still pop up at the damndest times. She's trying so hard and he's trying so hard and he's so accustomed to the past couple years they've spent falling apart, he sometimes forgets that they're both different. They're still adjusting but this doesn't mean the ground is going to crumble beneath them.

"Let's, uh, let's take a break, okay?" he rubs the back of his neck.

"Okay."

The air, however, remains thick with her heavy thoughts and he glances wistfully at the stereo as she turns and leaves the room. He's always loved watching her sing.

* * *

><p>Their phones go off almost simultaneously at 4:00am. Booth is a little faster when it comes to being abruptly pulled into consciousness, and he's talking to his boss before Brennan can manage to sleepily grip the cell buzzing against her nightstand. Her fingers knock the phone to the floor and she swears under her breath as she leans off the bed, all the while mentally cursing Booth and his coordination.<p>

By the time she's finished talking to Cam, Booth is already mostly dressed, and she struggles to snap her brain into working order. This is another thing that he can't understand; she has to endure being cognitively slower because of a baby she can't even feel yet, all the while knowing that jumping out of bed and running out to crime scenes at the drop of a hat used to be damn near effortless for her.

But even though she's frustrated – and it really is with herself; it has almost nothing to do with him, but she can't make him understand this either – there isn't a solitary thing she would trade now for the best parts of her life from a year ago. So she gets out of bed and stumbles into the closet, and minutes later they're in the car and Booth is talking about the scene. And she can't pay attention. She's still thinking about Cam and the missed meeting and their fight-that-wasn't-really-a-fight.

"The ravine gets steep so just be-

"You're still angry," she interrupts.

"Huh?" He turns away from the road to stare at her, and it strikes her that if anyone else took their eyes off the road as often as he does, she wouldn't be able to handle it without comment. "No, Bones, I'm not angry. I wasn't angry in the first place."

"Angry like you were after Hannah. Or maybe before Hannah. After me."

She watches him carefully and Booth flexes his grip on the steering wheel. "No," he answers truthfully. Slowly. "This is still pretty new, you know? You can't blame me for sometimes kind of forgetting that it's real. That it's... different."

"You get scared," Brennan states plainly.

"So do you."

She opens her mouth and he thinks she's going to deny it, but then she nods instead. "Yes. We are very much alike in that regard."

"See? Not angry."

"You can trust me, Booth."

He stares at her again and frowns. "I know that. I do trust you."

Brennan shifts in her seat with increasing agitation. "I mean that you can trust me not to leave. I'm very frustrated right now but it doesn't mean that I'm not content. I- I... am enjoying being in a relationship with you."

These pauses in her attempts to express herself stem from an overabundance of feeling, not a lack of it. And this is what he understands now that he hadn't remembered _then_. The people outside their immediate circle don't see this and it makes him uncomfortable to think that there had once been a time when he hadn't either.

When he pulls the car to the side of the deserted country road, Brennan begins her protest before he can even come to a complete stop.

"Booth! The crime scene!"

"It's not going anywhere, Bones."

"You know I don't like being the last to arrive."

"Would you relax?"

"_Don't _tell me to relax!"

"Can we rewind about thirty seconds? We were having a moment. Your yelling is distracting."

Brennan crosses her arm and grumpily sinks into her seat, and Booth is pretty sure he catches something about juvenile conduct unbecoming of a senior FBI agent, but he ignores this. "Thank you."

She shoots him a glare as a pointed reminder that she's not conceding voluntarily. He ignores this too.

"Look, I get a little bit frustrated too, but that doesn't mean I don't trust you, okay? I trust you. Always."

"We're very dysfunctional."

"Sometimes," he shrugs and agrees. "But most of the time we function pretty good."

She's comfortable with science and equations and statistics, and when she thinks of the parts of her and Booth that shine on their best days,she can believe that this conclusion is accurate (atrocious grammar aside). She can believe that they'll be okay and that their baby will be okay too. After all, if _Angela _can do it...

Brennan can't know any of this with real certainty, but there's a lot to be said for probability.

* * *

><p>It's nearly ten in the morning before Booth has a chance to harass Brennan for her initial findings. The involvement of local law enforcement always complicates matters, and he has spent the better part of the last two hours knee deep in political power plays and petty squabbles more befitting children the age of his son than full grown adults.<p>

When he opens the door to her office, Brennan is seated on the floor with most of her body slumped over the small table in front of her couch, and the smile this image brings to his face is instant. It would be easy for him to sit beside her without making any noise, but she's repeatedly told him she finds his manner of sneaking up on her immature, underhanded, and also a bit creepy – mainly because she can never manage to sneak up on him in turn, he's sure – and she looks so soft as she sleeps, he can't find it in himself to tease her.

The door shuts just loud enough to wake her, and Brennan jolts up straight and somehow manages to glare at him with eyes still wide and clouded, daring him to comment on the way he's found her. Booth doesn't comment. He lowers himself to the ground beside her and bumps her shoulder with his.

"I could have used you with me the last couple hours. You have this awesome habit of shutting everyone up when the pissing contests get out of control."

She tries to hide her smile, but it's obvious that she likes the thought of him needing her. That's a big thing with them. Feeling needed is important.

"I'm sorry, Booth; my first responsibility is to the bones... you are going to have to exercise your independence until I finish with the body."

"And when might that be?" he nudges.

"I'm still working on cause of death. Angela should have a face for you within a few hours."

"Good." He jumps up. "I'm gonna go check in with her. You need anything?"

"Coffee," Brennan smiles wanly. "Intravenous input would be preferential."

He laughs. "I'll see what I can do."

He gives her a quick kiss goodbye and then heads to the door. As he opens it, he looks back and sees her straightening the x-rays that had been resting beneath her head during her impromptu nap, and then he's experiencing one of those moments that leave him in awe of her dedication to the things that are important to her.

"Hey Bones?"

"Yes?"

"I haven't forgotten about these rap skills of yours. We're going to talk about that."

Brennan laughs and shakes her head. "No, we're certainly not."

"You've been hiding things from me."

"No, not hiding. I am just a woman of many talents. It would take a very long time for you to discover them all."

"Yeah well, use those many talents of yours to find me cause of death and then I can snoop through your iPod and see what other things shuffle play teaches me about you."

"Goodbye, Booth."

She has that look on her face that indicates she may or may not throw one of the files on her table in his general direction, so Booth chuckles and steps through the doorway (it's always better to be safe than sorry). He almost misses her quiet voice as he's closing the door behind him, but there it is. A few more lines from the same angry song as the night before (he assumes) and she doesn't get any further than she had the last time before he's laughing. She doesn't look up from her work, but the corners of her mouth are quirked upward and they're both smiling as he finally allows the door to click shut with him firmly on the outside.

And he's pretty sure they'll be okay too.


End file.
